If you don’t feel like reading my thoughts about La Isla de Aquinas, here’s the direct link to the story page.
Finally!
The complete story is published!!!! I also uploaded the eBook (in both .PDF as .ePub format), the complete Audio books are online and I edited the original Audio book page where all my audio books can be downloaded (you can find it here).
I really hope y’all enjoy the story! Please!! Let me know what you think of it. Both E-o-F and I want to learn from you how to improve our writing.
I can finally say that the new story is ready. The last two chapters still need some rework and polishing up, but since I’m going to publish this one with the same pace as I did with ‘Smoky Mountains,’ we’ve still got some time left.
E-o-F and I started talking about the outline of this story in late April early May 2021. I tried talking E-o-F into full co-authorship, but he didn’t bite 😊, and to be honest, I’m glad he didn’t. Our styles differ just too much (and I think this is true for every author out there) to create a story together. It’ll show. And that’s not a good thing.
Besides our style difference, we both use a different approach. Maybe you’re familiar with it, maybe not. E-o-F is an Architect, where I’m a gardener (more info: https://www.grantwriterteam.com/blog/grant-writing/whats-your-writing-style/). I honestly think both approaches have their pros and cons. But since E-o-F DID offer to write a chapter, I had to adapt. Not because an architect can’t work with a gardener (or the vice-versa), but because he needs to know WHAT to write. All the characters are in my head, and I know stuff like hair color and such, or I’ll just make it up when needed. E-o-F obviously doesn’t have that info. So I needed to become more or less an architect so that E-o-F could do his part.
Doing so, was quite an eye-opening experience. I won’t say I’m going to change my style. But I will prepare myself better when I start a new story. That’s something I’m taking away from this experience, and I want to thank E-o-F for showing me the advantages of thinking things through.
As I mentioned before, it’s a big one! 150K+ words is enormous! There are nineteen chapters and (I know…) an epilogue. As with Smoky Mountains, I don’t recommend reading the epilogue. But if you need closure, be my guest. There is no sex or anything in that one, just the tying up of loose ends. The big E-o-F chapter is chapter seventeen. That chapter alone is bigger than most stories you’ll find here. It’s got 36K+ words! But I promise it’s worth it!! It took me a few tries to get to the finish 😉
The story itself centers around Scott. He’s moved around a lot and lived primarily on a lot of different army bases. But when they meet Glenn, his life changes dramatically. Scott’s dad wants him to be a manly man, but Scott wants to be creative. And Glenn’s a professional photographer, so they hit it off instantly. I hope it isn’t too confusing, but there are two timelines. One with a young Scoot, and one where he learns to live to cope with Glenn’s passing.
The island, La Isla de Aquinas, is completely fictional. I needed a nice place in the Caribbean, so I checked Google Maps. There are a lot of islands out there, but I needed it to be fictional. And since most of these islands are named after some sort of Catholic Saint, I needed something like that too. So I stumbled upon Saint Thomas Aquinas, and the island was born. The friction between Colombia and Nicaragua is completely made-up too! So please, don’t feel offended by it! I needed a backstory, and this seemed plausible.
I know it took me almost a year to write, and I didn’t publish anything in that period. But I’m not the kind of writer who can put a story on the back burner and let it sit there for a while, in the meantime writing a completely different story. It just doesn’t work like that for me. But I was invested in this story and the characters, and so was E-o-F. So that’s why I felt the desperate need to finish it. This made me realize I need my next stories to be (much) shorter. I’m not necessarily a ‘quick wank story’ kind of guy, so there always be some kind of development. But 150K is something else…
And E-o-F deserves a lot of credit on this one!! We outlined the whole story together, he had a few good ideas we incorporated, he urged me to start writing in the present tense, which I did in about half the chapters. And he was there when I needed him! I had a few moments where I wasn’t in a good place with this story and wanted to drop out. But, each time, he put me back on track and helped me out whenever he could.
So as much as it’s my story, it’s E-o-F’s!!! Thanks again, Ed!!!!
I’ll update this post each time I publish a new chapter. If you subscribe to the email list, you’ll get an email from me the moment I publish the latest chapter (and other new stories, for that matter). I promise that’s the only goal of this list! No spam, unnecessary emails, or other annoying stuff. I’m paying all of this out of my own pocket here, so why would I do that? There are easier ways to make money off this site, but I choose not to.
I really, really hope you enjoy the story! After all, that’s why I write. I’m not a fan-service kind of guy, and I don’t NEED to write it down. It’s already inside my head, you know? But it’s relaxing to me, and the reward of getting comments (and I mean it that both good AND bad comments feel rewarding) is what drives me forward at the end of the day. Enjoy!!
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